MADOCA II (Message and Database Oriented Control Architecture II) is next generation of MADOCA and was developed to fulfill current and future requirements in accelerator and beamline control at SPring-8. In this paper, we report on the recent evolution in MADOCA II for data collection, which was missing in the past reports at ICALEPCS *,**. In MADOCA, the biggest challenge in data collection was to manage signals into Parameter Database smoothly. Users request Signal Registration Table (SRT) for new data collection. However, this costed time and manpower due to typo in SRT and iteration in DB registration. In MADOCA II, we facilitated signal registration scheme with prior test of data collection and validity check in SRT with web-based user interface. Data collection framework itself was also extended to manage various data collection types in SPring-8 with a unified method. All of data collection methods (polling, event type), data format (such as point and waveform data) and platform (Unix, Embedded, Windows including LabVIEW) can be flexibly managed. We started to implement MADOCA II data collection into SPring-8 with 241 hosts and confirmed stable operation since April 2016.* T. Matsumoto et al., Proceedings of ICALEPCS 2013, p.944. ** A.Yamashita et al., Proceedings of of ICALEPCS 2015, p.648

In 2011, CERN's Controls Middleware (CMW) team started a new project aiming to design and implement a new generation equipment access framework using modern, open-source products. After reviewing several communication libraries [1], ZeroMQ [2] was chosen as the transport layer for the new communication framework. The main design principles were: scalability, flexibility, easy to use and maintain. Several core ZeroMQ patterns were employed in order to provide reliable, asynchronous communication and dispatching of messages. The new product was implemented in Java and C++ for client and server side. It is the core middleware framework to control all CERN accelerators and the future GSI FAIR [3] complex. This paper presents the overall framework architecture; choices and lessons learnt while designing a scalable solution; challenges faced when designing a common API for two languages (Java and C++) and operational experience from using the new solution at CERN for 3 years. The lessons learnt and observations made can be applied to any modern software library responsible for fast, reliable, scalable communication and processing of many concurrent requests.[1] A. Dworak et al., "Middleware trends and market leaders 2011", ICALEPCS 2011. [2] ZeroMQ, http://zeromq.org [3] V. Rapp et al., "Controls Middleware for FAIR", PCaPAC 2014.

Two years ago, at the 2015 ICALEPCS conference in Melbourne Australia, we presented a paper entitled 'Replacing The Engine In Your Car While You Are Still Driving It*'. In that paper we described the mid-point of a very ambitious, multi-year, upgrade project involving the complete replacement of the low-level RF system, the timing system, the industrial I/O system, the beam-synchronized data acquisition system, the fast-protect reporting system, and much of the diagnostic equipment. That paper focused mostly on the timing system upgrade and presented several observations and recommendations from the perspective of the timing system and its interactions with the other systems. In this paper, now nearly three quarters of the way through our upgrade schedule, we will report on additional observations, challenges, recommendations, and lessons learned from some of the other involved systems.* E.Bjorklund, 'Replacing The Engine In Your Car While You Are Still Driving It', THHC2O03, Proceedings of ICALEPCS2015, Melbourne, Australia (2015)

In a complex machine such as a particle accelerator there are thousands of analogue signals that need monitoring and even more signals that could be used for debugging or as a tool for detecting symptoms of potentially avoidable problems. Usually it is not feasible to acquire and monitor all of these signals not only because of the cost but also because of cabling and space required. The RF system in the Large Hadron Collider is protected by multiple hardware interlocks that ensure safe operation of klystrons, superconducting cavities and all the other equipment. In parallel, a diagnostic system has been deployed to monitor the health of the klystrons. Due to the limited amount of space and the moderate number of signals to be monitored, a standard approach with a full VME or Compact PCI crate has not been selected. Instead, small embedded industrial computers with USB oscilloscopes chosen for the specific application have been installed. This cost effective, rapidly deployable solution will be presented, including existing and possible future installations as well as the software used to collect the data and integrate it with existing CERN infrastructure.

The European Spallation Source (ESS) is a Partnership of 17 European Nations committed to the goal of collectively building and operating the world's leading facility for research by use of neutrons by the second quarter of the 21st Century. The strive for innovation and the challenges that need to be overcome in order to achieve the requested performances pushed towards the adoption of one of the newest standards available on the market. ESS has decided to use MicroTCA as standard platform for the systems that require high data throughput and high uptime. The implications of this choice on the architecture of the systems will be described with emphasis on the data acquisition electronics.

VME is a standard for modular electronics widely used in research institutes. Slave cards in a VME crate are controlled from a VME master, typically part of a Single Board Computer (SBC). The SBC typically runs an operating system and communicates with the VME bus through a PCI or PCIe-to-VME bridge chip. The de-facto standard bridge, TSI148, has recently been discontinued, and therefore the question arises about what bridging solution to use in new commercial SBC designs. This paper describes our effort to solve the VME bridge availability problem. Together with a commercial company, MEN, we have open-sourced their VHDL implementation of the PCIe-VME64x interface. We have created a new commodity which is free to be used in any SBC having an FPGA, thus avoiding vendor lock-in and providing a fertile ground for collaboration among institutes and companies around the VME platform. The article also describes the internals of the MEN PCIe-VME64x HDL core as well as the software package that comes with it.

Em# project is a collaboration project between MAX IV Laboratory and ALBA Synchrotron to obtain a high performant four-channel electrometer. Besides the objective of accurate current measurements down to the pico-ampere range, the project pursues to establish a reusable instrumentation platform with time stamped data collection able to perform real time calculations for flexible feedback implementations. The platform is based on a FPGA responsible of acquisition and synchronization where a real-time protocol between the modules has been implemented (Harmony) [*]. The data acquired is transmitted via PCIe to a Single Board Computer with an embedded Linux distribution where high level processing and synchronization with upper levels of Control System is executed. In this proceeding, the reasons that lead to start a complex instrument development instead of using a Commercial On the Shelf (COTS) solution will be discussed. The results of the produced units will be analyzed in terms of accuracy and processing capabilities. Finally, different Em# applications in particle accelerators will be described, further widening the functionality of the current state-of-the-art instrumentation.[*] Present and Future of Harmony Bus, a Real-Time High Speed Bus for Data Transfer Between Fpga Cores, these proceedings

Complex control systems often require complex tools to facilitate daily operations in a way that assures the highest possible availability. Such a situation poses an engineering challenge, for which system complexity needs to be tamed in a way that everyday use becomes intuitive and efficient. The sensation of comfort and ease of use are matters of ergonomics and usability - very relevant not only to equipment but especially software applications, products and graphical user interfaces. The Controls Configuration Service (CCS) is a key component in CERN's data driven accelerator Control System. Based around a central database, the service provides a range of user interfaces enabling configuration of all different aspects of controls for CERN's accelerator complex. This paper describes the on-going renovation of the service with a focus on the evolution of the provided user interfaces, design choices and architectural decisions paving the way towards a single configuration platform for CERN's control systems in the near future.

Funding:This work was in part supported by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union (iNEXT grant, project No. 653706)Originally conceived at ESRF and first deployed in 2005 MXCuBE, Macromolecular Xtallography Customized Beamline Environment, has with its successor MXCuBE2, become a successful international collaboration. The aim of the collaboration is to develop a beamline control application for macromolecular crystallography (MX) that are independent of underlying instrument control software and thus deployable at the MX beamlines of any synchrotron source. The continued evolution of the functionality offered at MX beamlines is to a large extent facilitated by active software development. New demands and advances in technology have led to the development of a new version of MXCuBE, MXCuBE3, The design of which was inspired by the results of a technical pre-study and user survey. MXCuBE3 takes advantage of the recent development in web technologies such as React and Redux to create an intuitive and user friendly application. The access to the application from any web browser further simplifies the operation and natively facilitates the execution of remote experiments.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation gamma-ray observatory. CTA will incorporate about 100 imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) at a southern site, and about 20 in the north. Previous IACT experiments have used up to five telescopes. Subsequently, the design of a graphical user interface (GUI) for the operator of CTA poses an interesting challenge. In order to create an effective interface, the CTA team is collaborating with experts from the field of Human-Computer Interaction. We present here our GUI prototype. The back-end of the prototype is a Python Web server. It is integrated with the observation execution system of CTA, which is based on the Alma Common Software (ACS). The back-end incorporates a redis database, which facilitates synchronization of GUI panels. redis is also used to buffer information collected from various software components and databases. The front-end of the prototype is based on Web technology. Communication between Web server and clients is performed using Web Sockets, where graphics are generated with the d3.js Javascript library.

Funding:[*] Argonne National Laboratory's work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357.The purpose of the Advanced Photon Source Upgrade (APS-U) project is to update the facility to take advantage of the multi-bend achromat (MBA) magnet lattices, which will result in narrowly focused x-ray beams of much higher brightness. The APS-U installation has a short schedule of one-year. In order to plan and execute a task of such complexity, a collaboration between many individuals of very diverse backgrounds must exist. The Component Database (CDB) has been created to aid in documenting and managing all the parts that will go into the upgraded facility. After initial deployment and use, it became clear that the system must become more flexible, as the engineers started requesting new features such as tracking inventory assemblies, supporting relationships between components, and several usability requests. Recently, a more generic database schema has been implemented. This allows for the addition of more functionality without needing to refactor the database. The topics discussed in this paper include advantages and challenges of a more generic schema, new functionality, and plans for future work.

M.J. Slabber, F. Joubert, M.T. Ockards
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

Funding:National Research Foundation (South Africa)Data indexed by time is continuously collected from instruments, environment and users. Samples are recorded from sensors or software components at specific times, starting as simple numbers and increasing in complexity as associated values accrue e.g. status and acquisition times. A sample is more than a triple and evolves into a document. Besides variance, volume and veracity also increase and the time series database (TSDB) has to process hundreds of GB/day. Also, users performing analyses have ever increasing demands e.g. in <10s plot all target coordinates over 24h of 64 radio telescope dishes, recorded at 1Hz. Besides the many short-term queries, trend analyses over long periods and in-depth enquiries by specialists around past events e.g. critical hardware failure or scientific discovery, are performed. This paper discusses the solution used for the MeerKAT radio telescope under construction by SKA-SA in South Africa. System architecture and performance characteristics of the developed TSDB are explained. We demonstrate how we broke the mould of using general-purpose database technologies to build a TSDB by rather utilising technologies employed in distributed file storage.

Funding:National Research Foundation of South Africa. National Centre for Radio Astronomy of India.Development of KATCP based control systems for the KAT-7 and MeerKAT radio telescopes proved the value of a fully simulated telescope system. Control interface simulators of all telescope subsystems were developed or sourced from the subsystems. SKA SA created libraries to ease creation of simulated KATCP devices. The planned SKA radio telescope chose the TANGO controls framework. To benefit from simulation-driven development tango-simlib, an OSS Python library for data-driven development of TANGO device simulators, is presented. Interface simulation with randomly varying attributes only requires a POGO XMI file; more complex behaviour requires a simple JSON SIMDD (Simulator Description Datafile). Arbitrary behaviour is implemented selectively using Python code. A simulation-control interface for back-channel manipulation of the simulator for e.g. failure conditions is also generated. For the SKA Telescope Manager system an Eclipse DSEE (Domain Specific Engineering Environment) capturing the behaviour and interfaces of all Telescope subsystems is being developed. The DSEE produces tango-simlib SIMDD files, ensuring that the generated simulators match their formal specification.

The LINAC Coherent Light Source II (LCLS-II) is an upgrade of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory LCLS facility to a superconducting LINAC with multiple destinations at different power levels. The challenge in delivering timing to a superconducting LINAC is dictated by the stability requirements for the beam power and the 1MHz rate. A timing generator will produce patterns instead of events because of the large number of event codes required. The poster explains how the stability requirements are addressed by the design of two Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). The Allow Table GUI filters the timing pattern requests respecting the Machine Protection System (MPS) defined Power Class and the electron beam dump capacities. The Timing Pattern Generator (TPG) programs Sequence Engines to deliver the beam rate configuration requested by the user. The low level program, The TPG generates the patterns, which contains the timing information propagated to the Timing Pattern Receiver (TPR). Both are implemented with an FPGA solution and configured by EPICS. The poster shows an overall design of the high-level software solutions that meet the physics requirements for LCLS-II timing.

Funding:This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.For the last 10 years, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) has provided scientists with an application, the Campaign Management Tool (CMT), to define the parameters needed to achieve their experimental goals. Conceived to support the commissioning of the NIF, CMT allows users to define over 18,000 settings. As NIF has transitioned to an operational facility, the low-level focus of CMT is no longer required by most users and makes setting up experiments unnecessarily complicated. At the same time, requirements have evolved as operations has identified new functionality required to achieve higher shot execution rates. Technology has also changed since CMT was developed, with the availability of the internet and web-based tools being two of the biggest changes. To address these requirements while adding new laser and diagnostic capabilities, NIF has begun to replace CMT with the Shot Setup Tool (SST). This poses challenges in terms of software development and deployment as the introduction of the new tool must be done with minimal interruption to ongoing operations. The development process, transition strategies and technologies chosen to migrate from CMT to SST will be presented.LLNL-ABS-728212

The superconducting magnet test facility at CERN, (SM18), has been using the Automatic Quench Analysis (AQA) software to analyse the quench data during the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) magnet test campaign. This application was developed using LabVIEW in the early 2000's by the Measurement Test and Analysis section (MTA) at CERN. During the last few years, the SM18 has been upgraded for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) magnet prototypes. These HL-LHC magnets demand a high flexibility of the software. The new requirements were that the analysis algorithms should be open, allowing contributions from engineers and physicists with basic programming knowledge, execute automatically a large number of tests, generate reports and be maintainable by the MTA team. The paper contains the description, present status and future evolutions of the new AQA soft-ware that replaces the LabVIEW application.

The reliable and stable operation of the accelerator is the premise and foundation of physics experiments. For example, in the BEPCII, the fault of the magnet power supply front-end electronics devices may cause accelerator energy instability and even lead to beam loss. Therefore, it is very necessary to diagnose and locate the device fault accurately and rapidly, that will induce the high cost of the accelerator operation. Faults diagnosis can not only improve the safety and reliability of the equipment, but also effectively reduce the equipment's cycle costing. The multi-signal flow model proposed by Pattipati K.R is considered as the preferred method of industrial equipment faults detection. However, there are still some problems about fault probability conflict in the processing of correlation matrix diagnosis due to the hierarchical nature of multi-signal flow modeling. Thus we develop the fault diagnosis strategy based on the important prior knowledge of the fault. This method is applied to the front-end electronic devices of BEPCII magnet power supply control system and improves the fault diagnosis and analysis ability of magnet power supply control system.

The operation of the CERN tertiary infrastructures is carried out via a series of control systems distributed over the CERN sites. The scope comprises: 260 buildings, 2 large heating plants with 27 km heating network and 200 radiators circuits, 500 air handling units, 52 chillers, 300 split systems, 3000 electric boards and 100k light points. With the infrastructure consolidations, CERN is carrying out a migration and an extension of the old control systems dated back to the 70's, 80's and 90's to a new simplified, yet innovative, distributed control system aimed at minimizing the programming and implementation effort, standardizing equipment and methods and reducing lifecycle costs. This new methodology allows for a rapid development and simplified integration of the new controlled infrastructure processes. The basic principle is based on open standards PLC technology that allows to easily interface to a large range of proprietary systems. The local and remote operation and monitoring is carried out seamlessly with Web HMIs that can be accessed via PC, touchpads or mobile devices. This paper reports on the progress and future challenges of this new control system.

Funding:Work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under Contract DE-AC02-76SF00515SLAC's SPEAR3 Booster RF system was recently upgraded where the existing klystron providing RF power to a 5-cell cavity was replaced with a Solid State Amplifier (SSA). The Low Level RF Controls (LLRF) to drive the SSA was provided by a high performance FPGA based system built on SLAC ATCA modules. RF Cavity Tuner Controls were replaced with EtherCAT-based stepper motor controller. New hardware was designed and built for PLC-based Machine Protection System (MPS). Fast digitizers to sample and acquire LLRF signals were implemented in a LinuxRT Server. All of these required new Controls Software implementation. This poster illustrates the Controls associated with each of the above hardware.

The GANIL facility is drastically extending its possibilities with new projects, so increasing its capabilities in nuclear physics. The most significant one is the Spiral2 installation based on a linear accelerator, then to be associated with the S3, NFS and DESIR new experimental rooms. Beside of the legacy home made control system handling the original installation, Epics was chosen as the basic framework for these projects. First, some control system components were used during preliminary beam tests. In parallel, the whole architecture was designed while the organization for future operation started to be considered; also, more structured and sophisticated tools were developed and the first high level applications for the whole machine tuning started to be tested, jointly with the current onsite beam commissioning. Progression of the control system development is presented, from the first beam tests up to the whole Spiral2 commissioning. Then, according to the new projects to cope with, some highlights are given concerning the related organization as well as specific items and developments to be considered, taking benefit from the Spiral2 control system feedback experience.

Modbus-TCP is the Modbus RTU protocol with the TCP interface running on Ethernet. In our applications, an XPort device utilizing Modbus-TCP is used to control remote devices and communicates with the accelerator control system (EPICS). Modbus software provides a layer between the standard EPICS asyn support and EPICS asyn for TCP/IP or serial port driver. The EPICS application for each specific Modbus device is developed and it can be deployed on a soft IOC. The configuration of XPort and Modbus-TCP is easy to setup and suitable for applications that do not require high-speed communications. Additionally, the use of Ethernet makes it quicker to develop instrumentation for remote deployment. An eight-channel 24-bit Data Acquisition (DAQ) system is used to test the hardware and software capabilities.Authored by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC under U.S. DOE Contract No. DE-AC05-06OR23177.

This paper describes the concept of a generic data analytics reporting tool for SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems at CERN. The tool is a response to a growing demand for smart solutions in the supervision and analysis of control systems data. Large scale data analytics is a rapidly advancing field, but simply performing the analysis is not enough; the results must be made available to the appropriate users (for example operators and process engineers). The tool can report data analytics for objects such as valves and PID controllers directly into the SCADA systems used for operations. More complex analyses involving process interconnections (such as correlation analysis based on machine learning) can also be displayed. A pilot project is being developed for the WinCC Open Architecture (WinCC OA) SCADA system using Hadoop for storage. The reporting tool obtains the metadata and analysis results from Hadoop using Impala, but can easily be switched to any database system that supports SQL standards.

Since the beginning of computer era the storing and analyzing the data was one of the main focuses of IT systems. Therefore, it is no wonder that the users and operators of the coming FAIR complex have expressed a strong requirement to collect the data coming from different accelerator components and store it for the future analysis of the accelerator performance and its proper function. This task will be performed by the Archiving System, a component, which will be developed by FAIRs Controls team in cooperation with XLAB d.o.o., Slovenia. With more than 2000 devices, over 50000 parameters and around 30 MB of data per second to store, the Archiving System will face serious challenges in terms of performance and scalability. Besides of the actual storage complexity, the system will also need to provide the mechanisms to access the data in an efficient matter. Fortunately, there are open source products available on the market, which may be utilized to perform the given tasks. This paper presents the first conceptual design of the coming system, the challenges and choices met, as well as the integration in the coming FAIR system landscape.

A proton facility based on a superconducting cyclotron for cancer treatment is to be built by Huagong Tech Company Limeted, Wuhan, China. This facility is aimed at providing proton beams with continuously tuneable energy from 70 MeV to 250 MeV, for kinds of cancer treatments. Our team is responsible for the development of the treatment control system, which consists a number of functional modules and connects to many subsystems. In this paper, we will report our conceptual design of the treatment control system.

The high-gain free electron lasers (FEL) have given scientists hopes for new scientific discoveries in many frontier research areas. The Shanghai X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (SXFEL) test facility is commissioning at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) campus. The Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS) has successfully commissioned in the northeast of China, which is the brightest vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) free electron laser facility. The control systems of the two facilities are base on EPICS. The industrial computer, programmable logic controller (PLC) and field programmable gate array (FPGA) are adopt for device control. The archiver is based on the PostgreSQL database. The high-level applications are developed using Python. The details of the control system design, construction and commissioning will be reported in this paper.

The Australian Square Kilometre Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a radio telescope array in Western Australia. A third of the 36 telescopes forming the array have been fully commissioned and are in use under the early science program. The construction phase for the rest of the array has now completed and commissioning is continuing. This report continues on from the last status update and addresses new challenges as the telescope moves into the operational phase. The architecture of the system has proven robust, however some of the third party software choices have been reviewed as new software packages have appeared in the years since the initial adoption. We present the reasoning behind replacing some of our processes and software packages to ensure long-term operation of the instrument.

LIGHT (Linac Image Guided Hadron Technology) is a particle therapy system* developed by Advanced Oncotherapy plc. Accelerator, control and interlock systems are developed by its subsidiary A.D.A.M. SA, a CERN spin-off. The system is being designed to accelerate protons up to 230 MeV using a modular and compact 25-meter-long linear accelerator. It is being designed to operate in pulsed mode where beam properties (energy, pulse charge and spot size) can be changed at 200 Hz. The LIGHT product will be installed in different facilities. As such, the installations will differ in accelerator and beam transfer line layouts, number of treatment rooms (with an optional gantry), facility services, equipment suppliers and equipment versions. Thus the control and interlock systems need to be extensible through configuration and modularization. To achieve this, the control system relies on a multi-tier architecture with a clear separation between front-end devices and controllers. To minimize time-to-market, the systems rely mostly on COTS hardware and software, including a timing and triggering system and a light-weight software framework to standardize front-end controllers.* The LIGHT Proton Therapy System is still subject to conformity assessment by AVO's Notified Body as well as clearance by the USA-FDA

In this paper, the prototype of phase and amplitude detector for pulsed-RF measurement is described. The hardware is designed in VHDL and implemented using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for digital processing. The main phase and amplitude detection algorithm is implemented using state machine in the MicroBlaze soft processor. The detector system is designed to measure the phase and amplitude of a 5-microsecond wide 2,856 MHz pulsed-RF at a repetition rate of 0.5 Hz. The front-end hardware for the pulsed-RF signal acquisition is also described with the interface to the FPGA-based controller part. Initial test results of the prototype are presented.

Linear accelerator technology has been widely applied to radiotherapy machines and there has been an increasing demand of the machines in Thailand over the recent years. An attempt to increase the availability of the low-cost machines has been proposed for the domestic use purposes. Currently, the prototype of the 6 MeV medical linear accelerator is under development at Synchrotron Light Research Institute (SLRI) in Nakorn Ratchasima, Thailand. For beam shaping purposes a so-called secondary collimator is utilized with different size arrangement of the collimator jaws. The collimator motion control is one of the necessary machine subsystems for producing the desired field size of the beam. In this paper, the FPGA-based motion control system of the machine prototype is presented. The programmable logic part of the hardware is designed in VHDL for digital processing. The main motion control algorithm is implemented in the main processor of Zedboard FPGA. Communication between the motion control subsystem and the main control system software of the machine is also described.

FREIA Laboratory is a new facility for developing and testing instrumentation for particle accelerators. There are two pulsed 400 kW 352 MHz RF sources, presently used for testing superconducting RF cavities and there is a need to monitor the electromagnetic field in the experimental hall. The RF leakage detector system consists of number of physically identical nodes with one of them configured as a master and the rest as slaves. Each node supports 3 separate RF measurement channels with a frequency span of 100 kHz to 1 GHz. A desired frequency band is selected using a front-end band-pass filter. The sensitivity of the sensor is -34 dBm and the dynamic range 48 dB. The slaves are battery powered for easy installation. Special care has been taken to minimize the power consumption resulting in battery life to be 4-13 months using 3xAAA batteries. The footprint of the module is 60x100x40 mm. The communication between the master and the slaves uses a Wireless Link operating at the 868 MHz ISM band. The system is controlled by EPICS using the StreamDevice driver. The master RF module is connected via an RS-232 line and a MOXA NPort server to the control system network.

We have developed the TiCkS board based on the White Rabbit (WR) SPEC node, to provide ns-precision time-stamps (TSs) of input signals (e.g., triggers from a connected device) and transmission of these TSs to a central collection point. TiCkS was developed within the specifications of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) as one of the candidate TS nodes, with a small form-factor allowing its use in any CTA camera. The essential part of this development concerns the firmware in its Spartan-6 FPGA, with the addition of: 1) a 1ns-precision TDC for the TSs; 2) a UDP stack to transmit TSs and auxiliary information over the WR fibre, and to receive configuration & slow control commands over the same fibre. It also provides a 1-PPS and other clock signals to the connected device, from which it can receive auxiliary event-type information over an SPI link. A version of TiCkS with an FMC connector will be made available in the WR OpenHardware repository, so allowing the use of a mezzanine card with varied formats of input/output connectors, providing a cheap, flexible, and reliable solution for ns-precision time-stamping of trigger signals up to 200 kHz, for use in other experiments.

Funding:Work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science under Cooperative Agreement DE-SC0000661The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) accelerates many different ion species and charge states defining a wide spectrum of operating modes and parameters. The role of the Run Permit System (RPS) here is to examine if a requested state is suitable for the production of beam. The decision to permit beam is based on input from configuration management databases, machine and personnel protection systems, and beam characteristics and destination. Seeded with this information, an appropriate set of operating parameters are deployed to hardware to support the requested mode. This contribution will describe the interfaces, implementation, and behavior of the RPS at FRIB.

The European Spallation Source ERIC is being built in Lund, Sweden to complement the existing neutron sources in Europe and worldwide. ESS will be the bright-est neutron source ever built upon completion and aims to have an availability of 95% during steady state opera-tions. The purpose of Machine Protection at ESS is to protect the equipment in order to support the high availability. Due to the distributed nature of Machine Protection numerous design teams are involved to implement Protection Functions. The Machine Protection Development at ESS follows the Functional Protection lifecycle for System-of-systems developed at the facility. This paper focuses on the application of the Functional System Inter-action Process part of the Functional Protection method. To obtain the system interaction model, behavioural requirements and to allocate Protection Functions use case workshops are held. The feasibility of different system architectures and protection function implementations are discussed and simulated by going through fore-seen operational sequences, use cases. The different architectures and use cases are documented using Enter-prise Architect.

Injecting beams in CERN facilities is subject to the CERN safety rules. It is for this reason that the Beam Permit approval procedure was improved by moving away from a paper-based workflow to a digital form. For each facility the Beam Permits are signed by the various responsible specialists (Access systems, safety equipment, radiation protection, etc…). To achieve this, CERN's official Engineering Data Management System (EDMS) is used. The functionality of EDMS was extended to accommodate the additional requirements, whilst keeping a user friendly web interface. In addition, a new webpage within the CERN OP-webtools site was created with the purpose of providing a visual overview of the Beam Permit status for each facility. This new system is used in the CERN Control Centre (CCC) and it allows the operations team and all people involved in the signature process to follow the Beam Permit status in a more intuitive, efficient and safer way.

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) interlock related systems are configured with various system such as fast interlock, supervisory interlock, plasma control, central control, and heating using various types of hardware, software, and interface platforms. For each system, monitoring and analysis tools are already well-developed. However, for the analysis of system fault behavior, these heterogeneous platforms do not help finding the relation of failure. When the interlock events are latched or pulse is stopped by PCS, events are transmitted to different actuators and it could make another events via various interface. In other words, it could lead another factor of fault causes on different system. Through this application we will figure out sequence of fault factor during the pulse-by-pulse KSTAR operation. The KSTAR Data Integration System (KDIS) is configured with KSTAR event-driven architecture and data processing environment. This application will be developed on the KDIS environment and synchronized with KSTAR event. This paper will present the development of shot fault sequence analysis logic and application with KDIS.

The reliable protection of the ESS equipment is important for the success of the project. This requires multiple systems and subsystems to perform the required protection functions that prevent undesired hazardous events. The complexity of the machine, the different technical challenges and the intrinsic organisational difficulties for an in-kind project like ESS impose serious challenges to the distributed Machine Protection strategy. In this contribution, the difficulties and adopted solutions are described to exemplify the technical challenges encountered in the process.

High intensity hadron colliders and fixed target experiments at CERN require an increasing amount of robotic tele-manipulation interventions to prevent and reduce excessive exposure of maintenance personnel to the radioactive environment. Tele-manipulation tasks are often required on dated radioactive devices which were not conceived to be maintained and handled using standard one arm robotic solutions. Robotic platforms with a level of dexterity that often requires using two robotic arms with a minimum of six degrees of freedom are instead needed for these purposes. In this paper, the control of a novel robust robotic platform able to host and to carry safely a dual-arms robotic system is presented. The arms and the vehicle controls are fully integrated in order to guarantee simplicity to the operators during the realization of the robotic tasks. A novel high-level control architecture for the new robot is shown, as well as a novel low-level safety layer for anti-collision and recovery scenarios. Preliminary results of the system commissioning are presented using CERN accelerator facilities as a use case.

New isochronous cyclotron DC-280 is being created at the FLNR, JINR. Total amount of the process variables is about 4000. The variety of field devices of different types is 20. This paper describes architecture and basic principles of the distributed control system using LabVIEW DSC module.

Funding:Beijing Science and Technology CommitteeA compact AMS facility which is special used for further analyzing atmospheric pollution especially in north China via carbon-14 measurement was developed at CIAE (China Institute of Atomic Energy). This machine is a single acceleration stage AMS, running with the highest accelerate voltage of 200kV. The control system is based on distributed Ethernet control system, using standard TCP/IP protocol as main communication protocol. In order to connect to the main control network freely, device-level data-link layers were developed also. A LabVIEW client, developing virtual machine applied environment, provides friendly graphical user interface for the devices management and measurement data processing.

Funding:This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research used resources of ANL's ATLAS facility, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.The installation of a new Electron Beam Ion Source (EBIS) to the Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerating System (ATLAS) at Argonne National Laboratory requires a vacuum system capable of providing pressures in the region of 10-10 Torr. Historically, vacuum interlocks have been provided via analog logic chassis which are difficult to upgrade and maintain. In order to provide sufficient interlocks to protect high voltage components of the EBIS, a new programmable logic controller (PLC) based Vacuum control system has been developed and integrated into the rest of the accelerator supervisory control system. The PLC interfaces not only with fast acting relay based interlock signals but also with RS-485 based serial devices to monitor and control lower priority parameters such as pump speeds, vacuum pressure readout and set points, run hours and more. This work presents the structure and interface logic necessary to communicate with a range of vacuum gauges, turbo-molecular pumps and ion pump controllers. In addition, the strategy to interface vacuum control with the rest of the accelerator control system is presented.

On the HI-13 tandem accelerator, steer power supply and quadrupole lens power supply provides three different types of control interface, Remote control system of these power supplies implemented by using Siemens S7 series PLC, serial server, OPC server and WINCC, Long-time operation show that the control system is easy to be operated and its performance is reliable. Keywords: HI-13, power supply control system, WINCC

Funding:Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy.The development of HTTP service interfaces* to the BNL Collider-Accelerator Department (C-AD) controls system opens up the ability to more quickly and easily adapt existing codes developed for other systems for use at RHIC. A simple particle accelerator online model built for commissioning the NSLS II** was adapted for use with the Low Energy RHIC electron Cooling project (LEReC)*** and the Coherent Electron Cooling (CeC)**** proof of principle experiment. For this project, a set of python modules and a python application were adapted for use in RHIC by replacing NSLS II control system interfaces with python modules that interface to the C-AD controls HTTP services. This paper will discuss the new interfaces and the status of commissioning them for operations.* T. D'Ottavio, et al., these proceedings ** S. Seletskiy et al., TUPMA054, IPAC15, 2015. *** A. Fedotov et al., WEA4CO05, NAPAC16, 2016. **** V.N. Litvinenko et al., THPS009, IPAC11, 2011

Funding:This work has been supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).The operation of extensive control systems cannot be performed by adjusting all parameters one by one manually. Instead, a set of parameters is loaded and applied in bulk. We present a system to store such parameter sets in a type-safe fashion into and retrieve them from a configuration database. The configuration database is backed by an SQL database. Interfaces to store and retrieve data exist for the C++, Java and Python programming languages. GUIs are available both as a standalone program using C++ and Qt, and integrated into Control System Studio (CSS). The version integrated into CSS supports data validators implemented as Eclipse plugins that are run before each commit. The format of the configuration data that can be stored is XML-like, and export and import to/from XML is implemented. The database can hold several completely independent "files" of configuration data. In each file, several branches can be stored, each branch consisting of a chain of commits. Each commit can easily be retrieved at any time. For each entry, the modification history can easily be queried.For the DEPFET collaboration.

Funding:Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy.EPICS is widely used software infrastructure to control Particle Accelerators, its Channel Access (CA) network protocol for communication with Input/Output Controllers (IOCs) is easy to implement in hardware. Many vendors provide CA support for their devices. The RHIC Control System provides control of more than 400, 000 parameters through Accelerator Data Objects (ADO) software abstraction layer. In this paper we present software bridge, which allows to cross-communicate between ADO and EPICS devices. It consists of two separate programs: an ADO manager, which hosts the ADO parameters and executes caput() request to modify EPICS PV when parameter is changed; and an epics2ado program which monitors the EPICS PVs and notifies the ADO manager. This approach have been implemented in integration of the NSLSII PSC hardware interface into RHIC Controls System.

Funding:Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy.In keeping with a long tradition in the BNL Collider-Accelerator Department (C-AD) controls environment, we try to provide general and simple to use interfaces to the users of the controls. In the past we have built command line tools, Java tools, and C++ tools that allow users to easily access live and historical controls data. With more demand for access through other interfaces, we recently built a set of python and MATLAB modules to simplify access to control system data. This is possible, and made relatively easy, with the development of HTTP service interfaces to the controls*. While this paper focuses on the python and MATLAB tools built on top of the HTTP services, this work demonstrates clearly how the HTTP service paradigm frees the developer from having to work from any particular operating system or develop using any particular development tool.* T. D'Ottavio, et al., these proceedings

The new developments inside the CS-Studio community were made using the JavaFX platform to overcome the limitations and difficulties of using Eclipse SWT. This article will explain the benefits and disadvantages of using the JavaFX technology inside Eclipse RCP, and try to foresee the path of the new generations of CS-Studio application.

At the European Spallation Source (ESS), thousands of (physical and logical) devices will be in production and execute a wide range of functions to enable both the machine and end-station instruments to perform as expected from a controls point of view. Typical examples of such devices are racks, power supplies, motors, pumps, PLCs and IOCs. To properly manage the information of devices in an integrated fashion and at the same time allow external applications (consuming this information) to perform well, an application called Controls Configuration Database (CCDB) was developed at ESS. The present paper introduces this application, describes its features, architecture and technology stack, data concepts, interfaces, and ecosystem; finally, it enumerates development directions that could be pursued to further improve it.

The TANGO Alarm System, based on an efficient event-driven, highly configurable rule-based engine named AlarmHandler, has undergone a deep refactoring. The dedicated MySQL database has been dropped; the TANGO database now stores all the configuration whereas the HDB++ historical database keeps all the alarms history. Correlating alarms with any other engineering data is now much simpler. A dynamic attribute is provided for each alarm rule; this allows to easily build a hierarchy of AlarmHandlers. The AlarmHandler manages Attribute quality in the alarm rules and provides possible exceptions resulting in alarm evaluation. Mathematical functions, such as sin, cos, pow, min, max and ternary conditionals are available in the alarm formulae. The TANGO AlarmHandler device server is now based on the IEC 62682 standard.

Hardware access often brings implementation details into a control application, which are subsequently published to the control system. Experience at DESY has shown that it is beneficial for the software quality to use a high level of abstraction from the beginning of a project. Some hardware registers for instance can immediately be treated as process variables if an appropriate library is taking care of most of the error handling. Other parts of the hardware need an additional layer to match the abstraction level of the application. Like this development cycles can be shortened and the code is easier to read and maintain because the logic focuses on what is done, not how it is done. We present the abstraction concept we are using, which is not only unifying the access to hardware but also how process variables are published via the control system middleware.

This paper describes the design and the development of an innovative management software for the accelerators beamlines at INFN-LNS. The Graphical User Interface, the data exchange protocol, the software functionality and the hardware will be illustrated. Compared to traditional platforms for the accelerators console, at INFN-LNS we have developed a new concept of control system and data acquisition framework, based on a data structures server which so far has never been used for supervisory control. We have chosen Redis as a highly scalable data store, shared by multiple and different processes. With such system it is possible to communicate cross-platform, cross-server or cross-application in a very simple way, using very lightweight libraries. A complex and highly ergonomic Graphic User Interface allows to control all the parameters with a user-friendly interactive approach, ensuring high functionality so that the beam operator can visually work in a realistic environment. All the information related to the beamline elements involved in the beam transport, can be stored in a centralized database, with suitable criteria to have a historical database.

The Taiwan Photon Source (TPS) is a 3-GeV third-generation synchrotron light source located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The post-mortem (PM) system is act as an important tool to diagnostic the cause of trip events caused by beam loss. A MATLAB-based and web-based viewer were developed to plot and view the each event to understand the cause and effect of the event. The post-mortem viewer architecture and implementation were presented in this report.

At the ESRF the activity of several beamlines is based upon tomography X-ray imaging in various fields such as Paleontology, Medical Imaging and Materials Science. The instrument control and data processing systems are cloned on all the relevant beamlines, however the steps of the processing pipeline from the data acquisition to their full exploitation in premier quality publications are based upon a heterogeneous software scenario comprised of e.g. SPEC, Python, Octave, PyHST2 and MATLAB modules. The need has thus clearly appeared to logically sequence the operations performed by these different actors into user-friendly workflows. At the ESRF we selected a generic workflow tool, Orange, which was originally developed at the University of Ljubljana and designed for data mining in collaboration with the open source community. The graphical interface enables the easy inclusion/exclusion of functionalities represented by individual boxes. Each box can be managed by simple pieces of Python code generating graphical interfaces via the PyQT5 library and is defined by a set of inputs and outputs which can be linked together to produce consistent data processing workflows.

Developing operational User Interfaces (UI) can be challenging, especially during machine upgrade or commissioning where many changes can suddenly be required. An agile Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with enhanced refactoring capabilities can ease the development process. Inspector is an intuitive UI oriented IDE allowing for development of control interfaces and data processing. It features a state of the art visual interface composer fitted with an ample set of graphical components offering rich customization. It also integrates a scripting environment for soft real time data processing and UI scripting for complex interfaces. Furthermore, Inspector supports many data sources. Alongside the short application development time, it means Inspector can be used in early stages of device engineering or it can be used on top of a full control system stack to create elaborate high level control UIs. Inspector is now a mission critical tool at CERN providing agile features for creating and maintaining control system interfaces. It is intensively used by experts, machine operators and performs seamlessly from small test benches to complex instruments such as LHC or LINAC4.

The acquisition of X-ray diffraction data from macromolecular crystals is a major activity at many synchrotrons and requires user interfaces that provide robust and easy-to-use control of the experimental setup. Building on the modular design of the MxCuBE beamline user interface, we have implemented a finite state machine model that allows to describe and monitor the interaction of the user with the beamline in a typical experiment. Using a finite state machine, the path of user interaction can be rationalized and error conditions and recovery procedures can be systematically dealt with.Gabadinho, J. et al. (2010). MxCuBE: a synchrotron beamline control environment customized for macromolecular crystallography experiments. J. Synchrotron Rad. 17, 700-707

Control System Studio (CS-Studio) is one of the most widely-used display managers for EPICS. It is based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (Eclipse RCP), allowing for coherent integration of interfaces for different systems with common graphical elements and preferences. However, this user interface presents a different way of working to those from the previous generation of EPICS tools such as Extensible Display Manager (EDM) and Striptool. At Diamond Light Source, EDM has been used since commissioning in two different ways: for machine operations and for beamline controls. Both uses of EDM will eventually be replaced with CS-Studio and significant effort has been put into this transition. Two kinds of change proved necessary: adaptations to CS-Studio itself, and changes to the typical user workflows. This paper presents both types of changes that were needed to make CS-Studio a productive tool at Diamond.

The LIMA project started in 2009. The goal was to provide a software library for the unified control of 2D detectors. LIMA is a collaborative project involving synchrotrons, research facilities and industrial companies. LIMA supports most detectors used for X-ray detection or other scientific applications. Live display is supported via a video interface and most of the native video camera image formats are supported. LIMA provides a plug-in architecture for on-line processing which allows image pre-treatment before saving e.g. noise reduction algorithm or automatic X-ray beam attenuation during continuous scans. The library supports many file format including EDF, CBF, FITS, HDF5 and TIFF. To cope with increasing detector acquisition speed, the latest LIMA release includes multi-threaded, parallelized image saving with data compression (gzip or lz4). For even higher throughput a new design, based on a distributed multi-computer architecture, of the LIMA framework is envisaged. The paper will describe the LIMA roadmap for the coming years.

Funding:Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), Zip Code 13083-970, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil.Brazil is building Sirius, the new Brazilian synchrotron light source which will be the largest scientific infrastructure ever built in Brazil and one of the world's first 4th generation light laboratory. Mogno, the future X-ray nano and microtomography beamline is being designed to execute and process experiments in only few seconds. For this reason, prototypes and automated systems have being tested and implemented in the current Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) imaging beamline (IMX). An industrial robot was installed to allow fast sample exchange through an easy-to-use graphical user interface. Also, scripts using Python and Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) were implemented for automatic sample alignment, measurement and reconstruction. In addition, a flow cell for study dynamics and behaviour of fluids at the rock pore scale in time resolved experiments (4D tomography) is being projected.

CERN MEDICIS is a research facility that will make radioisotopes for medical applications using the primary proton beam at ISOLDE. It will start operating later in 2017. The high level application for the new beam line is responsible for the control of various equipment, such as power supplies, Faraday cups and scanners, as well as the monitoring of environmental parameters such as the vacuum level. It is characterized by a single user friendly interface to facilitate the operators tasks. In this paper we provide arguments for the chosen solution and give the latest update on the status of the project.

Funding:Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy.This paper describes a new web page creation system that allows web developers with limited programming experience to create interactive displays of control system data. Web pages can be created that display live control system data that updates in real-time, as well as data stored within our logging/archiving and database systems. Graphical, tabular, and textual displays are supported as well as standard interaction techniques via buttons, menus and tabs. The developer creates a web page using a custom web page builder. The builder presents a web page as a user-defined grid of tiled cells. The developer chooses the display style of each cell from a list of available cell types, then customizes its data content. Final polish can be applied using HTML and CSS. Specialized tools are available for creating mobile displays. This paper shows examples of the web pages created, and provides a summary of the experience of both the web developers and users.

PShell is an in-house developed scripting environment in use at PSI since 2014. Started as a beamline data acquisition tool at SLS, PShell is being used by different SwissFEL groups for the commissioning and operation of the SwissFEL machine. New features were added to meet new requirements, such as supporting beam synchronous data and streamed cameras. Besides providing a workbench for developing data acquisition logic, PShell also offers a convenient way to create user interfaces/panels that can easily trigger the execution of logic. To improve user experience and to simplify operation tools these panels can also be launched and used as standalone applications.

A few apps have been recently developed at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste. The main requirements are the compatibility with the main mobile device platforms and with the web, as well as the "mobile-first" user interface approach. We abandoned the possibility of developing native apps for the main mobile OSs. There are plenty of libraries and frameworks for the development of modern cross platform web/mobile applications. In this scenario the choice of a particular set of libraries is crucial. In this paper we will discuss the motivation of our choice trying to compare it with the other possibilities in regard to our particular use cases, as well as the first applications developed.

The Laser MegaJoule (LMJ) is a 176-beam laser facility, located at the CEA CESTA Laboratory near Bordeaux (France). It is designed to deliver about 1.4 MJ of energy to targets, for high energy density physics experiments, including fusion experiments. The first 8-beams bundle was operated in October 2014 and a new bundle was commissioned in October 2016. The next two bundles are on the way. PARC * is the computational system used to automate the laser setup and the generation of shot report with all the results acquired during the shot sequence process (including alignment and synchronization). It has been designed to run sequence in order to perform a setup computation or a full facility shot report in less than 15 minutes for 1 or 176 beams. This contribution describes how this system solves this challenge and enhances the overall process.* PARC: French acronym for automatic bundle settings prediction.

The European Spallation Source (ESS) are currently developing a suite of fifteen neutron instruments, the first eight of which will be available for routine scientific use by 2023. The instrument control system will be distributed through three layers: local controllers for individual instrument components; Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) software to implement higher level logic and act as a hardware abstraction layer; and an Experiment Control Program (ECP) which has an executive role, interacting with instrument components via the EPICS layer. ESS are now actively designing and prototyping the EPICS controls architecture for the neutron instruments, including systems which interface to core instrument components such as motion control systems, sample environment equipment, neutron choppers, instrument Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) systems, and the interfaces to the ECP. Prototyping activities have been executed in an integrated and coordinated manner to demonstrate the EPICS controls architecture in an environment representative of the neutron instruments to which the architecture will ultimately be applied.

The operational log system is one of the electric log systems for recording and viewing the accelerator operation time and contents of an operated device. Zlog (Zope-based log system)* developed by KEK was utilized for the RIBF control system. Zope is an open-source Web server and Web application framework written in Python. Using the Web application, information on accelerator operation is designated by a character string on Web browsers. However, the displayed string character on the Web browser will be complex for accelerator operators because many parameters are changed in accelerator operation, though the Web-based system has many advantages. For smoother accelerator operation, an ergonomically designed operational log system is required. Therefore, we developed a new operational log system for RIBF control system. The new system is possible to provide operational logs with a variety of rich GUI components. As of now, the operational log system has been working for accelerator operation by monitoring approximately 3,000 points as the EPICS record without any serious problem.*K. Yoshii et al.: Proc. ICALEPCS07, (2007), p. 299.

Funding:INAFUser-Centered Design is a powerful approach for designing UIs that match and satisfy users' skills and expectations. Interviews, affinity diagrams, personas, usage scenarios are some of the fundamental tools for gathering and analysing relevant information. We applied these techniques to the development of the UI for the control room of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescopes. We interviewed the personnel at two of the SKA precursors, LOFAR and MeerKAT, with the goal of understanding what features satisfy operators' needs and which ones can be improved. What was learned includes several usability issues dealing with fragmentation and low cohesiveness of the UIs, some gaps, and an excessive number of user actions needed to achieve certain goals. Low usability of the UI and the large scale of SKA are two challenges in developing its UI because they affect the extent to which operators can focus on important data, the likelihood of human errors and their consequences. This paper illustrates the followed method, provides examples of some of the artefacts that were produced and describes and motivates the resulting usability recommendations which are specific for SKA.

Sirius is the new Brazilian Synchrotron and will be finished in 2018. Based on experiences at LNLS UVX light source along with researches and implementations, we present our new approach to develop user interfaces for beamlines control. On this process, the main tools explored are Python, Qt and some Python libraries: PyQt, PyDM and Py4syn. Powerful resources of these modules and Python straightforward coding guarantee flexible user interfaces: it is possible to combine graphical applications with intelligent control procedures. At UVX, EPICS and Python are software tools already used respectively for distributed control system and control routines. These routines often use Py4Syn, a library which provides high-level abstraction for devices manipulation. All these features will continue at Sirius. More recently PyQt turned out to be a compatible and intuitive tool to build GUI applications, binding Qt to Python. Also PyDM offers a practical framework to expose EPICS variables to PyQt. The result is a set of graphical and control libraries to support new user interfaces for Sirius beamlines.

Funding:European Space AgencyThe European Ground System Common Core (EGS-CC) initiative is now materializing. The goal of the this initiative is to define, build and share a software framework and implementation that will be used as the main basis for pre- and post- launch ground systems (Electrical Ground Support Equipment and Mission Control System) of future European space projects. The initiative is in place since year 2011 and is being led by the European Space Agency as a formal collaboration of the main European stakeholders in the space systems control domain, including European Space National Agencies and European Prime Industry. The main expected output of the EGS-CC initiative is a core system which can be adapted and extended to support the execution of pre- and post-launch Monitoring and Control operations for all types of missions and throughout the complete life-cycle of space projects. This presentation will introduce the main highlights of the EGS-CC initiative, its governance principles, the fundamental concepts of the resulting products and the challenges that the team is facing.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a global project that aims to build a large radio telescope in Australia and South Africa with around 100 organizations in 20 countries engaged in its detailed design. The Signal and Data Transport (SaDT) consortium, includes the software and hardware necessary for the transmission of data and information between elements of SKA, and the Synchronization and Timing (SAT) system provides frequency and clock signals. The SAT local monitoring and control system (SAT. LMC) monitors and controls the SAT system. SAT. LMC has its team members distributed across India, South Africa and UK. This paper discusses the systems engineering methods adopted by SAT. LMC on interface design with work packages owned by different organizations, configuration control of design artefacts, and quality control through intermediate releases, design assumptions and risk management. The paper also discusses the internal SAT. LMC team communication model, cross culture sensitivity and leadership principles adopted to keep the project on track and deliver quality design products whilst staying flexible to the changes in the overall SKA program.

The Spiral2 linear accelerator will drive high intensity beams, up to 5 mA and 200 kW at linac exit. In tuning phase, or when not used by the experimental areas, the beam will be stopped in a dedicated beam dump. To avoid excessive activation of this beam dump, in order to allow human intervention, a safety classified system had been designed to integrate the number of particles dropped in it within each 24 hours time frame. For each kind of beam, a threshold will be defined and as soon as the threshold is reached a beam cut-off will be sent to the machine protection system. This system, called SLAAF: System for the Limitation of the Activation of the beam dump (Arret Faisceau in French) rely on LabView and EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control) technology. This paper will describe the specification and development processes and how we dealt to meet both functional and safety requirements using two technologies not commonly used for safety classified systems.

Funding:Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy.The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) complex of accelerators at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) operates using a large distributed controls system, consisting of approximately 1.5 million control points, over 430 VME based control modules, and thousands of server processes. We have developed a new testing platform that can be used to improve code reliability and help streamline the code development process by adding more automated testing. The testing platform simulates the control system using the actual controls system code base but by redirecting the I/O to simulated interfaces. In this report, we will describe the design of the system and the current status of its development.

Control systems of large experimental facilities need a great number of heterogeneous interconnected parameters to control software applications. As configuration information grows in volume, it becomes harder to be maintained manually and poses a potential threat to data integrity. To tackle this problem, we applied ontological approach to storing configuration data. Ontology is a formal representation of concepts and relations of the domain of discourse, enriched by rules for inferring assumed knowledge. We designed the ontology that describes the controlling electronics for the double-direction bipolar transfer line K-500, which transports beam from the Injection Complex to colliders VEPP-4 and VEPP-2000 at BINP, Novosibirsk, Russia. We populated the ontology by importing data from existing configuration files of the control system and developed the interface for querying configuration data. The designed storage has several benefits over the conventional approaches. It maintains heterogeneous objects with non-trivial dependencies in centralized form, performs data verification and can be expanded to the diverse ontology describing all information about the facility.

Funding:Extreme Light Infrastructure, CZ.1.05/1.1.00/02.0061The ELI Beamlines facility is a Petawatt laser facility in the final construction and commissioning phase in Prague, Czech Republic. The central control system connects and controls more than 40 complex subsystems (lasers, beam transport, beamlines, experiments, facility systems, safety systems) with hundreds of cameras. For this, a comprehensive set of standard solutions is provided: Hardware interface standards guarantee ad-hoc software integration, for commonly used models, standardised auxiliary hardware (triggering: optical/TTL, power supplies) is available. Information on key parameters (vacuum compatibility, noise levels) is collected. 95% of cameras are interfaced using an vendor-independent C+±SDK. Exceptions are only made for special detectors (for example: wavefront sensors, x-ray cameras). By using a strict model-based approach and a component-based design, all cameras and 2D-detectors can be controlled with the same C+±API. This leads to standardized GUIs, TANGO-servers,..

Funding:Work supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science under contract DE-AC02-76SF00515LCLS-II's high beam rate of almost 1MHz and the requirement that several "high-performance" systems (such as MPS, BPM, LLRF, timing etc.) shall resolve individual bunches precludes the use of a traditional software based control system but requires many core services to be implemented in FPGA logic. SLAC has created a comprehensive open-source firmware framework which implements many commonly used blocks (e.g., timing, globally-synchronized fast data buffers, MPS, diagnostic data capture), libraries (Ethernet protocol stack, AXI interconnect, FIFOs, memory etc.) and interfaces (e.g., for timing, diagnostic data etc.) thus providing a versatile platform on top of which powerful high-performance systems can be built and rapidly integrated.

Funding:Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy.This paper describes the development and use of an HTTP services architecture for building controls applications within the BNL Collider-Accelerator department. Instead of binding application services (access to live, database, and archived data, etc.) into monolithic applications using libraries written in C++ or Java, this new method moves those services onto networked processes that communicate with the core applications using the HTTP protocol and a RESTful interface. This allows applications to be built for a variety of different environments, including web browsers and mobile devices, without the need to rewrite existing library code that has been built and tested over many years. Making these HTTP services available via a reverse proxy server (NGINX) adds additional flexibility and security. This paper presents implementation details, pros and cons to this approach, and expected future directions.

Funding:Work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science under Cooperative Agreement DE-SC0000661.The FRIB, is a new heavy ion accelerator facility currently under construction at Michigan State University. It is being built to provide intense beams of rare isotopes. The low level controls system integrates a wide variety of hardware into an EPICS/PLC based control system. This paper will present the challenges encountered with resulting hardware interfaces, and lessons learned that can be applied to future projects. These challenges include both technical design and project management challenges that are encountered when integrating hardware from other departments.

Control system of HIRFL-CSR accelerator is now upgrading to new architecture based on Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS). Design and implement power supply subsystem, data distribution subsystem, data acquisition subsystem, etc. This paper describes the design and implementation of the control system and introduce the next work for upgrading synchronization subsystem and middle/high level applications.

Funding:This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning of the Korean GovernmentAt Korea Multi-purpose Accelerator Complex (KO-MAC), we have been operating a proton linac since 2013 [1]. It consists of a 100 MeV accelerator and 5 operational target rooms. Beam operation at KOMAC is carried out by a home-grown control system with a machine protection system which affects the accelerator the least when the machine suddenly fails. Our work is mainly concentrated on interlock sequence of vacuum related equipments based on a programmable logic controller (PCL). PCLs monitor vacuum status and control vacuum pumps and gate valves. By applying interlock sequence to PCLs connected to the vacuum equipments, we close gate valves to isolate a failed part so the the rest of the accelerator remains under vacuum, and safely shut down the vacuum pumps. Then the MPS receives a signal to safely stop the beam operation to protect the accelerator. We describe in this paper architecture of our PLC on interlock sequence of vacuum related equipment and its implementation."vacuum", "Interlock"

The ISIS spallation neutron source has been a production facility for over 30 years, with a second target station commissioned in 2008. Over that time, the control system has had to incorporate several generations of computer and embedded systems, and interface with an increasingly diverse range of equipment. We discuss some of the challenges involved in maintaining and developing such a long lifetime facility.

Control system of the 1.5 GeV Taiwan Light Source was working near 25 years. The TLS control system is a proprietary design. Limited resource allocation prevent major revise impossible. It was performed minor upgrade several times to avoid obsolete of some system components and keep up-to-date since its delivery. To avoid obsolete of some system components and keep up-to-date, various minor updates were performed during these days. These efforts allow new devices installed, obsoleted parts replacement, add new software components and functionality. Strategic and efforts will summary in this report.

Several degree of freedom have been introduced in the design of the proton source (named PS-ESS) and in the Low Energy Beam Transport line (LEBT) developed at INFN-LNS for the European Spallation Source (ESS) project. The beam commissioning was focused on the most important working parameters in order to optimize the beam production performance taking into account the ESS accelerator requirements. The development of a MATLAB custom code able to interact with the EPICS control system framework was needed to optimize the short time available for the beam commissioning. The code was used as an additional high level control system layer able to change all source parameters and read all beam diagnostics output data. More than four hundred of thousand configurations have been explored in a wide range of working parameters. The capability to connect Matlab to EPICS enabled also the developing of a genetic algorithm optimization code able to automatic tune the source towards a precise current value and stability. A dedicated graphical tool was developed for the data analysis. Unexpected benefit come out from this approach that will be shown in this paper.

Funding:Presented work is conducted in collaboration with ETM/Siemens in the scope of the CERN openlab projectThe paper presents the concept of a modular and scalable archiver (historian) for SCADA systems at CERN. By separating concerns of archiving from specifics of data-storage systems at a high abstraction level, using a clean and open interface, it will be possible to integrate various data handling technologies without a big effort. The frontend part, responsible for business logic, will communicate with one or multiple backends, which in turn would implement data store and query functionality employing traditional relational databases as well as modern NOSQL and big data solutions, opening doors to advanced data analytics and matching the growing performance requirements for data storage.

AMQP was originally developed for the finance community as an open way to communicate the vastly increasing over-the-counter trace, risk and clearing market data, without the need for a proprietary protocol and expensive license. In this paper, we explore the possibility to use AMQP with MQTT extensions in a cross platform, cross language environment, where the communication bus becomes an extendible framework in which simple/thin software clients can leverage the many expert libraries at CERN.

The volume and quality of scientific data produced at the Australian Synchrotron continues to grow rapidly due to advancements in detectors, motion control and automation. This makes it critical that researchers have access to computing infrastructure that enables them to efficiently process and extract insight from their data. To facilitate this, we have developed a compute platform to enable researchers to analyse their data in real time while at the beamline as well as post-experiment by logging in remotely. This system, named ASCI, provides a convenient web-based interface to launch Linux desktops running inside Docker containers on high-performance compute hardware. Each session has the user's data mounted and is preconfigured with the software required for their experiment. This poster will present the architecture of the system and explain the design decisions in building this platform.

Intelligent robotic systems are becoming essential for inspection and measurements in harsh environments, such as the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) accelerators complex. Aiming at increasing safety and machine availability, robots can help to perform repetitive or dangerous tasks, reducing the risk for the personnel as the exposure to radiation. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel at CERN has been equipped with fail-safe trains on monorail able to perform autonomously different missions as radiation survey, civil infrastructures monitoring through photogrammetry, fire detection as well as survey measurements of accelerator devices. In this paper, the entire control architecture and the design of the lowlevel control to fulfil the requirements and the challenges of the LHC tunnel are described. The train low-level control is based on a PLC controller that communicates with the surface via 4G through VPN, where a user-friendly graphical user interface allows the operation of the robot. The low-level controller includes a PLC fail-safe program to ensure the safety of the system. The results of the commissioning in the LHC are presented.

Control system was operated near three years to support commissioning and operation of the TPS. Experiences accumulated in last three years in hardware, software have been confirmed it can fulfil its mission. Functionality and reliability were improved during last three years. Long term strategic for performance improvement and maintenance are revised. Efforts will be summarized in this reports.

L.R. Brederode, L. Van den Heever
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

The MeerKAT radio telescope is currently in full production in South Africa's Karoo region and will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope array in the centimeter wavelength regime in the southern skies until the SKA1 MID telescope is operational. This paper identifies the key telescope specifications, discusses the high-level architecture and current progress to meet the specifications. The MeerKAT Control and Monitoring subsystem is an integral component of the MeerKAT telescope that orchestrates all other subsystems and facilitates telescope level integration and verification. This paper elaborates on the development plan, processes and roll-out status of this vital component.

PandABlocks is the open source firmware and software stack that powers PandABox, a Zynq SoC based "Position and Acquisition" platform for delivering triggers during multi-technique scanning. PandABlocks consists of a number of FPGA functional blocks that can be wired together at run-time according to application specific requirements. Status reporting and high speed data acquisition is handled by the onboard ARM processor and exposed via a TCP server with a protocol suitable for integration into control systems like "EPICS" or "TANGO". Also included in the framework is a webserver and web GUI to visualize and change the wiring of the blocks. The whole system adapts to the functional blocks present in the current FPGA build, allowing different FPGA firmware be created to support new FMC cards without rebuilding the TCP server and webserver. This paper details how the different layers of PandABlocks work together and how the system can be used to implement novel triggering applications.

Funding:Funding from FCT (Portuguese government funding agency of the MCTES); project "ColaboracÃ£o na ExperiÃªncia ATLAS", CERN/FISNUC/0005/2015One of the proposed solutions for upgrading the high voltage (HV) system of Tilecal, the ATLAS hadron calorimeter, consists in removing the HV regulation boards from the detector and deploying them in a low-radiation room where there is permanent access for maintenance. This option requires many ~100m long HV cables but removes the requirement of radiation hard boards. That solution simplifies the control system of the HV regulation cards (called HVRemote). It consists of a Detector Control System (DCS) node linked to 256 HVRemote boards through a tree of Ethernet connections. Each HVRemote includes a smart Ethernet transceiver for converting data and commands from the DCS into serial peripheral interface (SPI) signals routed to SPI-capable devices in the HVRemote. The DCS connection to the transceiver and the control of some SPI-capable devices via Ethernet has been tested successfully. It was fabricated a test board (HVRemote-ctrl) with the interfacing sub-system of the HVRemote. It is being tested through SPI-interfaces and several devices were already validated. A next version adds a few more ADC/DAC devices for checking their suitability for the final design.

A new general purpose data acquisition and control board (Board51) is presented in this paper. Board51 has primarily been developed for use in the ALICE experiment at CERN, but its open design allows for a wide use in any application requiring flexible and affordable data acquisition system. It provides analog I/O functionalities and is equipped with software bundle, allowing for easy integration into the SCADA. Based on the Silicon Labs C8051F350 MCU, the board features a fully-differential 24-bit ADC that provides an ability to perform very precise DAQ at sampling rate up to 1kHz. For analog outputs two 8-bit current-mode DACs can be used. Board51 is equipped with UART to USB interface that allows communication with any computer platform. As a result the board can be controlled through the DIM system. This is provided by a program running on a computer publishing services that include measured analog values of each ADC channel and accepts commands for setting ADC readout rate and DACs voltage. Digital inputs/outputs are also accessible using the DIM communication system. These services enable any computer on a common network to read measured values and control the board.

System on a chip (SoC) based system widely apply for accelerator control recently. These system with small footprint, low-cost with powerful CPU and rich interface solution to support many control applications. SoC based system running Linux operation system and EPICS IOC embedded to implement several applications. TPS (Taiwan Photon Source) adopts some SoC solutions in control system, includes alarm announcer, RadFET reader, frequency and divider control, power supply control, etc. The efforts for implementing are summarized in this paper.

At the Centre for Proton Therapy at the Paul Scherrer Institute a cyclotron, two gantries and a fixed beamline are being used to treat tumours. In order to prevent non-optimal beam delivery, an interlock patient safety system (PaSS) was implemented that interrupts the treatment if any sub-system reports an error. To ensure correct treatment, the PaSS needs to be thoroughly tested as part of the regular quality assurance as well as after each change. This typically required weeks of work, extensive beam-time and may not comprehensively detect all possible failure modes. With the opportunity of the installation of a new gantry, an automated PaSS test stand was developed that can emulate the rest of the facility. It consists of a NI PXI chassis with virtually unlimited IOs synchronously stimulated or sampled at 1MHz, a set of adapters to connect each type of interfaced signal and a runtime environment. We have also developed a VHDL based formal language to describe stimuli, assertions and specific measurements. We present the use of our test stand in the verification and validation of the PaSS, showing how its full quality assurance, including report generation was reduced to minutes.

Access to the interlocked zones of the CERN accelerator complex is allowed only for personnel wearing standard personal protective equipment. This equipment is complemented by specialised personal protective devices in case of specific hazards related to the remnant radiation or the presence of cryogenic fluids. These complex devices monitor the environment in the vicinity of the user and warn the user of the presence of hazards such as radiation or oxygen deficiency. The use of the devices is obligatory, but currently only enforced by procedures. In order to improve the safety of the personnel it has been proposed to verify that users are carrying their devices switched on when entering. This paper describes the development of a specialised multi-protocol terminal, based on Texas Instruments digital signal processor and integrated in the personnel protection system. The device performs local checks of the presence and status of operational dosimeter prior to allowing access to the interlocked zones. The results of the first tests in the Proton Synchrotron accelerator complex will be presented.

LIGHT (Linac Image Guided Hadron Technology) is a particle therapy system* developed by Advanced Oncotherapy plc. Accelerator, control and interlock systems are developed by its subsidiary A.D.A.M.SA, a CERN spin-off. The system is being designed to accelerate protons up to 230 MeV using a modular and compact 25-meter-long linear accelerator. It is being designed to operate in pulsed mode where beam properties (energy, pulse charge and spot size) can be changed at 200 Hz. A proof-of-concept accelerator is being assembled and tested at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland). Control and interlock systems are developed using an exploratory prototyping approach and COTS hardware. Requirements for the final LIGHT control and interlock systems are iteratively clarified through creation and refinement of these prototypes. We will continue to support the proof-of-concept accelerator activities while starting to design the final LIGHT control and interlock systems in parallel, building upon the knowledge acquired with the proof-of-concept accelerator. The matured final LIGHT control and interlock systems will gradually replace the prototypes to automate procedures and test the system before deployment* The LIGHT Proton Therapy System is still subject to conformity assessment by AVO's Notified Body as well as clearance by the USA-FDA

F. Joubert, M.J. Slabber
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

Funding:National Research Foundation (South Africa)The MeerKAT radio telescope control system generates monitoring and scheduling data that internal and external systems require to operate. Distributing this data in near real-time, requires a scalable messaging strategy to ensure optimal performance regardless of the number of systems connected. Internal systems include the MeerKAT Graphical User Interfaces, the MeerKAT Science Data Processing subsystem and the MeerKAT Correlator Beamformer subsystem. External systems include Pulsar Timing User Supplied Equipment, MeerLICHT and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Many more external systems are expected to join MeerKAT in the future. This paper describes the strategy adopted by the Control and Monitoring team to distribute near real-time monitoring and scheduling data at scale. This strategy is implemented using standard web technologies and the publish/subscribe design pattern.

The Linac Coherent Light Source II (LCLS-II) is a major upgrade of the LCLS facility at SLAC, scheduled to start operations in 2020. The High Performance Systems (HPS) defines a set of LCLS-II controls sub-systems which are directly impacted by its 1 MHz operation. It is formed around a few key concepts: ATCA based packaging, digital and analog application boards, and 10G Ethernet based interconnections for controls. The Common Platform provides the common parts of the HPS in term of hardware, firmware, and software. The Common Platform Software (CPSW) provides a standardized interface to the common platform's FPGA for all high-level software. YAML is used to define the hardware topology and all necessary parameters. YCPSWASYN is an asynPortDriver based EPICS module for FPGA register access and asynchronous messaging using CPSW. YCPSWSYN has two operation modes: an automatic mode where PVs are automatically created for all registers and the record's fields are populated with information found in YAML; and a manual mode where the engineer can choose which register to expose via PVs and freely choose the record's filed information.

Funding:For the ATLAS Muon CollaborationThe foreseen upgrades of the LHC accelerator and the experiments will drastically increase the data and trigger rates. To cope with the vast and low latency data flow, the ATLAS small wheel muon detector will be replaced with a New Small Wheel. Among the upgrades needed, is a radiation tolerant Slow Control Adapter (GBT-SCA) ASIC dedicated for the on-detector control and monitoring. The ASIC employs various interfaces, making it flexible to match the needs of the different operations. On the backend, the Front-End Link eXchange system will be the interface between the data handling system and the detector front-end and trigger electronics. A dedicated slow control data component was developed as the middleware from FELIX to the end users. It is based on the OPC Unified Architecture protocol and it is comprised of an OPC-UA server, that will handle the slow control traffic from the control room to the GBT-SCA and vice versa. Ultimately, various scope-oriented OPC-UA clients, connected to the OPC-UA server, will be employed to configure and calibrate the ASICs, program the FPGAs, oversee the well-functioning of the boards and monitor the environmental parameters of the detector.

G. Smit
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is responsible for developing the SKA Observatory, the world's largest radio telescope ever built: eventually two arrays of radio antennas - SKA1-Mid and SKA1-Low - will be installed in the South Africa's Karoo region and Western Australia's Murchison Shire respectively, each covering a different range of radio frequencies. In particular, the SKA1-Mid array will comprise of 133 15m diameter dish antennas observing in the 350 MHz-14 GHz range, each locally managed by a Local Monitoring and Control (LMC) system and remotely orchestrated by the SKA Telescope Manager (TM) system. All control system functionality run on the Tango Controls platform. The Dish Single Pixel Feed (SPF) work element will design the combination of feed elements, orthomode transducers (OMTs), and low noise amplifiers (LNAs) that receive the astronomical radio signals. Some SPFs have cryogenically cooled chambers to obtain the sensitivity requirements. This paper gives a status update of the SKA Dish SPF and LMC interaction design, focusing on SPF, LMC simulators and engineering/operational user interfaces, prototypes being developed and technological choices.

Control systems of neutron instruments are responsible for the movement of a variety of mechanical axes. In the TANGO based control systems developed by Forschungszentrum Jülich for neutron instruments, Siemens S7-300 PLCs with single axis stepper motor controllers from Siemens or Phytron have been used for this purpose in the past. Synchronous coordinated movement of several axes has been implemented with dedicated 4-axes NC modules (FM357) for the S7-300. In future, the recent S7-1500 PLC family shall be used for motion tasks. With the S7-1500, stepper motor control is possible with low-cost fast digital outputs, so called PTOs (pulse trade outputs). The integrated motion functions of the S7-1500 directly support synchronous movement. The function block interface defined by PLCopen serves as a homogeneous programming interface which is independent of a specific motion controller. For the single crystal diffractometer HEiDi at the research reactor FRM-II a replacement for a S7-300 with FM357 has been implemented based on a S7-1500 PLCs and a PTO module.

The Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) is in the final stages of developing an open-source BPM system for Sirius, a 4th-generation synchrotron light source under construction in Brazil. The system is based on the MicroTCA.4 standard comprising AMC FPGA boards carrying FMC digitizers and a CPU module. The software is built with the HALCS framework [1] and employs a service- oriented architecture (SOA) to export a flexible interface between the gateware modules and its clients, providing a set of loosely-coupled components favoring reusability, extensibility and maintainability. In this paper, the BPM system will be discussed in detail focusing on how specific functionalities of the system are integrated and developed in the framework to provide SOA services. In particular, two domains will be covered: (i) gateware modules, such as the ADC interface, acquisition engine and digital signal processing; (ii) software services counterparts, showing how these modules can interact with each other in a uniform way, easing integration with control systems.[1] L.M. Russo, J.V. Ferreira Filho, "Gateware and Software Frameworks for Sirius BPM Electronics", PCaPAC16, paper THDAPLCO03.

Industrial control systems for the CERN technical infrastructure and accelerator complex consist of a myriad of devices and components geographically distributed around the CERN facilities. In the event of an intervention in such systems, the on-call engineer or the system expert needs detailed information about the nature of the problem, e.g. what device, what problem, intervention procedures, and contextual data like the location of the device, current access conditions to this place, the list of access rights required and whether he/she is granted with these rights. This is of special relevance when the person responsible for the intervention has only limited knowledge of the control system as it is the case for some on-call services. At CERN, this information is scattered over a number of data sources. This paper presents MARS, a web-based tool designed to federate data from heterogeneous sources with the aim of providing support for interventions and maintenance activities. The information can be displayed in a single web page or be accessed through a REST API.

Funding:This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Advanced Grant (AdG), 2014, ERC-2014-ADGAt the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society a new very high speed scanning tunneling microscope (VHS-STM) is being set up to resolve glass dynamics (Cryvisil). We have been successfully using EPICS (v3) for many of our most important and larger experiments. However, for the new project, the data throughput to be achieved with EPICS (v3) is not sufficient. For this reason, we have completely aligned the experiment control for the STM to the new EPICS7 by using the new protocol pvAccess. The development versions of EPICS 3.16 and bundleCPP of the EPICSv4-suite are in use. Both of them will be the base components of the new EPICS7 Framework. The expected data rate is 300 MByte/s for up to 5 hrs to address the transition from a vitreous state to a crystal-line in real space over a wide range of temperatures ranging from cryogenic temperatures to 1500 K (*). In the poster we will show the control system setup (VMEbus, RTEMS-SMP, MVME6100, MVME2500, V375, SIS3316) and the used environment like ArchiverAppliance and pva2pva gateway.* http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/198020en.html

CERN's Data Interchange Protocol (DIP)* is a publish-subscribe middleware infrastructure developed at CERN to allow lightweight communications between distinct industrial control systems (such as detector control systems or gas control systems). DIP is a rudimentary data exchange protocol with a very flat and short learning curve and a stable specification. It also lacks support for access control, smoothing or data archiving. This paper presents a mechanism which has been implemented to keep track of every single publisher or subscriber node active in the DIP infrastructure, along with the DIP name servers supporting it. Since DIP supports more than 55,000 publications, regrouping hundreds of industrial control processes, keeping track of the system activity requires advanced visualization mechanisms (e.g. connectivity maps, live historical charts) and a scalable web-based interface** to render this information is essential.* W. Salter et al., "DIP Description" LDIWG (2004) https://edms.cern.ch/file/457113/2/DIPDescription.doc ** B. Copy et al., "MOPPC145" - ICALEPCS 2013, San Francisco, USA

A total of 33 gas control applications are currently in production in the LHC Experiments and the CERN accelerator complex. Each application contains around fifty synoptic views and hundreds of plots. In this paper, the entirely model-driven approach followed to generate all these HMIs is presented. The procedure implemented simplifies the creation of these graphical interfaces; allowing the propagation of changes to all visualizations at once in a coherent manner, thus reducing the long-term maintenance effort. The generation tool enables the creation of files of similar content based on templates, specific logic (rules) and variables written in simple user-defined XML files. This paper also presents the software design and the major evolution challenges currently faced, how the functions performed by the tool, as well as the technologies used in its implementation, have evolved while ensuring compatibility with the existing models.

Funding:This work is funded by the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, under grant agreement 676548.As a contribution to the European Spallation Source as part of BrightnESS, the Paul Scherrer Institut is involved in the streaming of EPICS data and the writing of NeXus compliant HDF5 files. We combine this development with the transition of the AMOR instrument at the Paul Scherrer Institut to EPICS and a streaming based data architecture. To guide our development before ESS has operational equipment, we use a detailed simulation of the instrument AMOR at SINQ to test and integrate our data streaming components. We convert EPICS data sources to Google FlatBuffers as our message format and distribute them using Apache Kafka. On the file writing side, we combine the messages from EPICS data sources as well as from neutron events to write HDF5 files at rates up to 4.8 GiB/s using Parallel HDF. This platform will also be used for testing the experiment control software on top of EPICS.

Sardana and Taurus form a python software suite for Supervision, Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) optimized for scientific installations. Sardana and Taurus are open source and deliver a substantial reduction in both time and cost associated to the design, development and support of control and data acquisition systems. The project was initially developed at ALBA and later evolved to an international collaboration driven by a community of users and developers from ALBA, DESY, MAXIV and Solaris as well as other institutes and private companies. The advantages of Sardana for its adoption by other institutes are: free and open source code, comprehensive workflow for enhancement proposals, a powerful environment for building and executing macros, optimized access to the hardware and a generic Graphical User Interface (Taurus) that can be customized for every application. Sardana and Taurus are currently based on the Tango Control System framework but also capable to inter-operate to some extend with other control systems like EPICS. The software suite scales from small laboratories to large scientific institutions, allowing users to use only some parts or employ it as a whole.

The web continues to grow as an application platform, with accessibility and platform independence as major benefits. It also makes it possible to tie services together in new ways through simple APIs. At MAX IV we are using web services for various purposes related to the control system, for example, monitoring servers and services, accessing alarm history, viewing control system status, managing system and users logs and running recurring jobs. Furthermore, all user management is also accessed via web applications, and even data analysis and experiment control can now be performed via web based interfaces. We make an effort to use existing tools whenever possible (e.g. Kibana, Prometheus), and otherwise develop systems in-house, based on current well established libraries and standards, such as JavaScript, Python, Apache, etc. This paper presents an overview of our activities in the field and describes different architectural decisions taken.

The ELI Beamlines facility is a Petawatt laser facility in the final construction and commissioning phase in Prague, Czech Republic. The central control system operates and controls complex subsystems (lasers, beam transport, beamlines, experiments, facility systems, safety systems) with huge ammount of devices and computers. Therefore standards for software development were established: - Model based development - Standard approach to user interfaces - Standard approaches to device interfaces - Third party envirnment interfaces TANGO framework was choosen for communication in distributed control system environment.

A browser-based graphical user interface has been developed at Diamond. It is known as known as MalcolmJS as it communicates using Diamond's Malcolm Middleware protocol. The original goal was to communicate, via websockets with a PandABox in order to allow a user to examine and set attributes of numerous functional blocks within the instrument. With the continuing maturity of the JavaScript language, in particular the release of ES6, along with the availability of off-the-shelf reactive open-source JavaScript libraries, such as Facebook's React and Node.js, a rich set of tools and frameworks have entered the arena of user interface development suitable for control systems. This paper describes the design decisions based on these tools, experiences and lessons learned during and after the development process and the possibilities for future development as a generic, adaptable framework for instrument and control system user interfaces.

In the ever-growing control system at CERN, there is a need for having an easy to use, yet fast and flexible tool that interfaces with all the different middleware in the accelerator, experiments and technical infrastructures. With RADAR 2.0 we wanted to address this issue, making a LabVIEW based, drag and drop visual tool that hides much of the system complexity from the user and within seconds gives the operator a ready to use, fully functional control system GUI. RADAR 2.0 interfaces with the CERN Middleware (CMW), the CERN Accelerator and Logging system (CALS), OPC-UA and DIM. With its class based implementation it can easily be extended to other data sources (Files, Databases, middleware) on demand.

G. Smit
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is responsible for developing the SKA Observatory, the world's largest radiotelescope ever built: eventually two arrays of radio antennas - SKA1-Mid and SKA1-Low - will be installed in the South Africa's Karoo region and Western Australia's Murchison Shire, each covering a different range of radio frequencies. In particular SKA1-Mid array will comprise 133 15m diameter dish antennas observing in the 350 MHz-14 GHz range, each locally managed by a Local Monitoring and Control (LMC) system and remotely orchestrated by the SKA Telescope Manager (TM) system. Dish LMC will provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be used for monitoring and Dish control in standalone mode for testing, TM simulation, integration, commissioning and maintenance. This paper gives a status update of the LMC GUI design involving users and tasks analysis, system prototyping, interface evaluation and provides details on the GUI prototypes being developed and technological choices.

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a free electron laser (FEL) facility operating at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC). The LCLS Machine Protection System (MPS) contains thousands of inputs and hundreds of protection interlocks. The inputs and logic configuration are defined in SQLite database files. Real-time state information is hosted by EPICS signals. Control room operators use a Graphical User Interface (MPSGUI) to view and manage faults. The MPSGUI provides a wealth of useful information, from hardware input details to high-level logic flow, but it was difficult for operators to take advantage of this. The workflow required cross-referencing between several screens. This poster presents the greatly improved workflow and usability of the MPSGUI. The requested improvements were defined in meetings between the MPS controls team and the control room operators. The improved GUI allow operators to more quickly respond to MPS faults and diagnose problems reducing troubleshooting time by 20 percent.

Funding:This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-1565546.ReA3 is the rare isotope beam (RIB) reaccelerator at the Michigan State University's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). ReA3 is unique in its specialty and is being used to reaccelerate RIBs presently produced by the Coupled Cyclotron Facility (CCF) and in the future, by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) which is currently under construction. A transition to CS-Studio as the graphical user interface tool is underway to align ReA3 Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) with the FRIB style, providing operators with a consistent and integrated environment. This contribution will describe the challenges and strategies for implementing the new HMIs at an operating facility. It will demonstrate the use of mock-ups and a simulated environment for interface design and testing.

Due to the massive parallel operation modes at the GSI accelerators, a lot of accelerator setup and re-adjustment has to be made during a beam time. This is typically done manually and is very time-consuming. With the FAIR project the complexity of the facility increases furthermore and for efficiency reasons it is recommended to establish a high level of automation. Modern Accelerator Control Systems allow a fast access to both, accelerator settings and beam diagnostics data. This provides the opportunity together with the fast-switching magnets in GSI-beamlines to implement evolutionary algorithms for automated adjustment. A lightweight python interface to CERN Front-End Software Architecture (FESA) gave the opportunity to try this novel idea, fast and easy at the CRYRING@ESR injector. Furthermore, the python interface facilitates the work flow significantly as the evolutionary algorithms python package DEAP could be used. DEAP has been applied already in external optimization studies with particle tracking codes*. The first results and gained experience of an automatized optimization at the CRYRING@ESR injector are presented here.* S. Appel, O. Boine-Frankenheim, F. Petrov, Injection optimization in a heavy-ion synchrotron using genetic algorithms, Nucl. Instrum. Methods A, 852 (2017) pp. 73-79.

The integration of the Data Acquisition, Offline Processing and Hardware Controls using MQTT has been proposed for the STAR Experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Since the majority of the Control System for the STAR Experiment uses EPICS, this created the need to develop a way to bridge MQTT and Channel Access bidirectionally. Using CAFE C++ Channel Access library from PSI/SLS, we were able to develop such a MQTT-Channel Access bridge fairly easily. The prototype development for MQTT-Channel Access bridge is discussed here.

After studying some alternatives for macromolecular crystallography beamlines experiment control and had considered the effort to create an in-house made solution, LNLS decided to adopt MXCuBE*. Such decision was made considering main technologies used to develop it, based on Python, which is being largely used in our laboratory, its basic support to EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System), the control system adopted for the LNLS beamlines, and because of its stability. Then, existing MXCuBE implementation has been adapted to meet LNLS requirements, considering that previously it was mainly ready to control systems other than EPICS. Using basic MXCuBE engines, new classes were created on devices abstraction layer, which communicates to EPICS IOCs (Input/Output Controllers), like AreaDetectors, MotorRecords among others. Py4Syn** was employed at this abstraction layer, as well. New GUI components were developed and some enhancements were implemented. Now, MXCuBE has been used on LNLS MX2 beamline since the end of 2016 with positive feedback from researchers. The adoption of MXCube proved to be right, given its flexibility, performance and the obtained results.* Gabadinho, J. et al., 2010, "MxCuBE: (…)". J. of S. Radiation, V. 17, pp. 700-707; ** Slepicka, H. et al., 2015. "Py4Syn: (…)". J. of S. Radiation, V. 22, pp. 1182-1189.

After more than 15 years of stable operation it was time to develop a new standard experiment control and data acquisition system for HZB beamlines. The aim is to create a modular system based on commercial hardware components. Because of the convincing hardware interfacing and good experience with PXI devices we choose this as hardware platform and LabVIEW as software development system. Starting in late 2015, we developed a framework with modules for configuration, (scan) processing, device communication, logging etc. The user interface is bisected as (i) graphical and (ii) scripting version. Where the 'included' script engine is python. The system serves both, standard commissioning tools as well as specialised instrument setups. It is integrated into the metadata catalogue system (ICAT) of the HZB in terms of collecting log and meta data and storing those according to the data policy of the institute. We will present an overview of the system features in general and a specific instrument view of a rather complex beamline at HZB.

Funding:The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the funding by the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication.The monochromator is known to be one of the most critical optical elements of a synchrotron beamline. It directly affects the beam quality with respect to energy and position, demanding high stability performance and fine position control. The new high-dynamic double-crystal monochromator (HD-DCM) [1], prototyped at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), was designed for the future X-ray undulator and superbend beamlines of Sirius, the new Brazilian 4th generation synchrotron [2]. At this kind of machine, the demand for stability is even higher and conflicts with factors such as high-power loads, power load variation, and vibration sources. To identify and ensure sufficient control of the dynamic behaviour of all subcomponents in the proto-type, an implementation in MATLAB/Simulink Real-Time environment in a Speedgoat Real-Time Perfor-mance Machine was developed. This approach enables rapid prototyping, by allowing a shared environment for system modeling and testing. The tool was developed in a modular architecture aiming at practical model itera-tion and platform migration to standard beamline con-trollers, which can prove portability and scalability fea-tures.[*]R. R. Geraldes et. al., 'Método de controle de grau de liberdade em sistemas mecatrÃ’nicos e monocromador de duplo cristal' [**]A. R. D. Rodrigues et al., 'Sirius Status Report'

Modern control software has given us virtually unlimited possibilities for monitoring and controlling EPICS systems, but sacrifices the organic feel of faders and knobs at our fingertips. This article will show how to reclaim that experience without losing the power of software through control surfaces commonly used with DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) to manipulate audio, demonstrating how real motorised touch-sensitive faders, buttons and assignable V-pots will improve and speed up the control experience.

For normally sighted developers it is hard to imagine how the user interface is going to look to a color blind person. Our purpose is to draw attention to people with color blindness and to consider their color vision. For that, this paper presents the integration of color blindness simulators into the development process of user interfaces. At the end we discuss the main contributing factors.

Funding:National Research Foundation of South AfricaThe MeerKAT radio telescope control system uses the KATCP protocol and technology stack developed at SKA SA. The future SKA project chose the TANGO controls technology stack. However, MeerKAT and phase 1 of the SKA-mid telescope are intimately related: SKA-mid will be co-located with MeerKAT at the SKA SA Karoo site; the first SKA-mid prototype dishes will be tested using MeerKAT systems; MeerKAT will later be incorporated into SKA-mid. To aid this interoperation, TANGO to KATCP and KATCP to TANGO translators were developed. A translator process connects to a device server of protocol A, inspects it and exposes an equivalent device server of protocol B. Client interactions with the translator are proxied to the real device. The translators are generic, needing no device-specific configuration. While KATCP and TANGO share many concepts, differences in representation fundamentally limits the abilities of a generic translator. Experience integrating TANGO devices into the MeerKAT and of exposing MeerKAT KATCP interfaces to TANGO based tools are presented. The limits of generic translation and strategies for handling complete use cases are discussed.

Funding:This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725.The Display Builder started as a comprehensive update to the CS-Studio BOY panel editor and runtime. The design was changed to a modular approach, separating the model of widgets and their properties from the graphical representation and the runtime. The model is fully multithreaded. The representation has been demonstrated in both SWT and JavaFX, for now intending to concentrate on the latter. The runtime, based on the thread-safe model, avoids user thread delays and improves overall performance for complex widgets like images as well as scripts and rules. We present the current state of the development and initial deployments at beam lines of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Spallation Neutron Source.